It is my time to write a blog post. Kris Jet handed me the challenge of writing something game related with the theme “Peace love and understanding”. I’ve had a week to think about this and I’ve decided upon writing a mock-up concept.

Street Fighter series, copyright Capcom, fair use.

Peace love and understanding, or PLAU
is a game where you play one part in a relationship. The control mechanism is similar to that of street fighter and other similar games. The goal however, is quite different. The goal is not to beat the other participant, but to make the relationship survive the challenges that you encounter. It is about maintaining balance in entropy.

Each player has three bars one LOVE-bar , one PEACE-bar and one RAGE-bar.

A fail-condition is invoked if a player overflows on the LOVE-bar , or if there is too little LOVE. The LOVE-bar of a player represents how much that player is given love from the other player, so if the player receives too much love, he would feel the other partner is needy and tiring, and will thus leave the relationship.

The PEACE-bar affects how much peace and stability there is in the relationship. If this is low for a player, rage will build up faster. If it is very high, the player will be less capable of delivering love, and less capable of emptying rage(apathy), the player has also starts asking existentialistic questions about all kinds of odd stuff and has a tiny chance of just leaving the relationship for no apparent reason.

The RAGE-bar builds up if a player has needs that is not dealt with or by actions of partner. If the player gets too much rage, the player will leave the relationship in a angry scene, maybe throw some dishes in the face of the partner, make a scene. The bigger the RAGE, the bigger chance of throwing a tantrum. Rage can be lowered by throwing a tantrum or by doing actions that bring PEACE and LOVE within ideal balance.

Actions of the game

A player can choose to make love, communicate and avoid the other player. Communicating has a chance of invoking a tantrum. Avoiding the other player will increase peace in the avoiding player, decrease love and increase rage in the player chasing the avoider.

Pacing

The game will start out with a couple that has newly fallen in love. The players will age. If one manages to keep the relationship stable, the couple will have children. This will increase the complexity of the game and it will be harder to keep the relationship working. When the children become teenagers, it’s very hard. When the children grow up and leave home, there will be a time where peace is very high, but love is low and apathy and existentialism might destroy the relationship.

If one manage to keep the relationship going until the players die of age, a happy family will gather at the funeral, and they will say how you always loved each other and managed to keep in love for ever, all that stuff.

If the relationship fails, a new relationship will happen. When death sets in for the player and the player has been very lousy with relationships,
few people will come to the funeral, and those who come might end up complaining a bit.